


Hudson River Retrievers

by HeliosNerd



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: AKC, Agility, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, American Kennel Club, Best Friends, Canon Compliant, Childhood Friends, Conformation, Conformation Dog Shows, Dog Shows, Dog Sports, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gundogs, Obedience (Dog Show), Retrievers, Service Dogs, golden retrievers, hunting dogs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29193837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeliosNerd/pseuds/HeliosNerd
Summary: When the Golden Retriever was first registered to the American Kennel Club in 1925, the Barnes family was instrumental to the breed's establishment. Of course, this means Steve is involved too, with the breed that will soon become intrinsically tied to Captain America.Follow the familiar Captain America trilogy, now featuring America's golden dog!
Comments: 1





	Hudson River Retrievers

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thanks so much for reading! I rushed this first chapter because today is National Golden Retriever Day, so I intend to have slightly longer and better developed chapters in the future. 
> 
> This story follows the main Captain America movie plots up until Winter Soldier, with the addition of dogs. From there the story is divergent. I hope to explore some of my favorite dog sports, including AKC conformation shows, obedience, and agility. I love dog sports so if you have any questions feel free to ask! 
> 
> Enjoy!

2014

“He doesn’t want to be found,” Sam had told him. He was right in theory; their missing person had no intention of being found out or followed, and he’d disappeared without any trace. Knowing the new Bucky, he could be anywhere hiding in plain sight, halfway across the world or stowing away in the crypts beneath the compound. Anywhere. Master spy meets undetectable assassin. They’d have to comb through nonsense leads for months, maybe years, just to catch sight of the trail. Bucky was gone, pure and simple. But Steve had one idea before grasping at straws.

The barn door was heavy and overgrown. It barely slid on its tracks, even for Steve, but he wrenched it through weeds and eroded mud, paint and rust flaking off in his hands. It’d been green in its heyday. This was the barn furthest in from the road, left to ruin while the other buildings were maintained unemotionally as historical markers. It was a museum with some walking paths but little foot traffic. He didn’t blame it, being so far out of the way for a more obscure piece of the story. But the best thing about this place had always been the quiet, the solitude.

When he stepped inside the barn—after letting the dust settle—he started to think this was an attempt in vain. Why would Bucky come here, of all places? He would be put off by the trailhead and the parking lot, the few sparse groups of people out enjoying the park. He wouldn’t dare enter buildings that no longer looked correct, that were cheap restorations of photos without any heart. This place didn’t mean anything anymore. Bucky wouldn’t want to stay.

The old wood creaked beneath some unseen weight. His blood ran cold but he scanned the dark anyway, trying to will the shadows to become real shapes. He saw beneath the stairs, in the alcove where they used to pile up unused bedding, the insubstantial silhouette of Bucky.

He braved a few steps towards it, stopping when the shadows stiffened and drew back. “It’s me.”

Some light from the open door seeped in. He could just barely see Bucky’s eyes with it. 

“You came home,” Steve said. Even in the dark he saw that a few blankets had been left behind, and that the stairs weren’t sturdy enough to go up to the loft. Up there was where they kept less impressive awards, probably abandoned too, moth-eaten over the last seventy years.

Bucky stared at him, torn between pain and confusion and—maybe—relief. He said thinly, voice dry, “I knew the way.”

***

1925

He drew swirls in the dust with a stick, seated on the curb. He was trying real hard not to look up at Bucky, who was clutching the straps of his book bag and watching both ends of the street. Bucky was excited, Steve dejected. Clear to see which one of them had weekend plans. 

“They’re new,” Bucky said to him. He’d already given the speech every day at school, walking to and from, in Steve’s room and everywhere in between. He had a few precious photographs that he’d stolen from his mom. They were grainy, blurred shots of fields and animals who weren’t accustomed to sitting still while on the job. Their fur was shaggy but they weren’t large dogs, barely cresting above the grass. Slender shoulders, feathered tails. A step too strong to be setters, large heads that could never be spaniels. Too much fur to be pointers. 

“Golden Retrievers,” Steve muttered. “I know.”

“We’re gonna bring them to the Westminster show,” Bucky repeated and Steve stopped drawing. “It’s not ’til June but we gotta practice.”

Steve stared straight ahead, across the street at unremarkable buildings. Diner windows, boutiques, clock repairers. He’d sooner memorize the patterns in lace parasols than listen to this speech again. Bucky and his fancy dogs, on a farm outside the city. 

“You’re invited, you know,” Bucky quipped. He thought it was a joke but he felt Bucky’s eyes on him. So he looked up, and Bucky waited expectantly. 

Steve didn’t dare believe it. “Invited to what?”

“To the kennel.” Bucky grinned. He’d been keeping this a secret too well. “I already asked, your mom said you could come. The dogs aren’t too big for you.”

He dropped the stick and stood up. Bucky wasn’t that much taller but he gaped at him like he was. “You mean it?”

“I wouldn’t go meet dogs without you,” Bucky promised. He bumped Steve with a shoulder, which knocked him back. “But we have to do chores too.”

He didn’t even mind chores. In the same moment he was excited and suddenly inadequate. “But they’re your parents’ nice dogs. Are you sure I’m allowed?”

“I’m sure.” He took one hand off his book bag and slung it around Steve’s shoulder. “I need you so we can have the best dogs around.”

It was a car ride out of town. Steve hadn’t ever been this far before, when the buildings stopped and there were fields, forests, pastures of horses and cows. He pressed his nose against the window, trying to see the animals roaming far-off fields. He counted to himself and lost count immediately, and blinked against so much sky and green beneath it. Bucky kept whispering to him and he barely paid attention, but Bucky was scheming and Steve was dreaming. Bucky had all these ideas, taking dogs to shows and winning big rosettes, camping in the wilderness with nothing but the dogs for protection, teaching Steve how to swim and build fires so that they could hunt with the dogs like they were meant to. Steve imagined some of those things but mainly just envisioned soft-mouthed dogs with kind eyes, and maybe getting the chance to call one his own.

When the car pulled into the dirt driveway of a particular farm Steve couldn’t believe this was it. One modest farmhouse, one shed, and one massive barn. The edge of the property was fenced but they drove right through an open section, no gates necessary. The big barn had some areas sectioned off by chain link fences, and in some of them were russet, wiggling dogs. When Bucky opened his door they were both knocked back inside by one particularly eager—and uncontained—puppy that invited himself right in.

“That’s Ace,” Bucky managed to say while pulling the dog away from Steve. Ace sniffed loudly and wagged his entire tail in broad strokes, and even with Bucky’s arms wrapped around his neck he managed to pull away, closer to Steve.

Steve sat back, pushed by the dog’s presence. He’d never met an animal this assertive before. Ace snuffled and poked his wet nose into Steve’s chest and his face, and then Steve started laughing when Ace licked at him. Okay, friendly after all. 

Bucky yanked the dog away and the two of them tumbled out of the car, and Steve stepped out right after. He had to make a good impression. He’d met Bucky’s parents before, that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was how well he matched up to the fancy dogs. So far Ace looked like the rest of them, the same uncontained excitement and sweet eyes crinkled like they were smiling, and that was a good start. But what if the rest didn’t like him? 

Bucky picked himself up—with help from Ace—and grabbed Steve’s wrist. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

Steve looked back to the adults, but he didn’t really need the permission. Regardless, Bucky’s parents were occupied having some discussion with other adults near the porch of the house, probably having to do with expensive dogs and the Westminster show. Bucky dragged him into the barn and Ace followed, still wiggling alongside them and sniffing loudly. All the dogs that were outside ran in, through doors in the barn. Inside was lined with enclosures too, but the floors in them were scattered with blankets and chewed bones and baseballs. Each pen had a wood plaque and a name etched into it. Bucky directed them all to the pen appropriately labeled “Ace” and pushed the pup through its open gate.

“He can get out,” Bucky explained, shutting the gate and holding it closed while Ace jumped up at the latch and nosed it open expertly. “We’re supposed to lock it.”

“Got it.” Steve tried to commit the detail to memory. Ace could escape, so the latch had to be locked. If he was ever allowed to come back he had to make sure he knew everything about being there. “How do you lock it?”

Bucky scanned the ground. He pointed and Steve jumped forward to grab a thin strip of rope from the ground. It was knotted already, but the knot connected two separate pieces. Steve handed it over anyway and Bucky sighed. “You tie it up. He chews through them sometimes too.”

“So,” Steve eyed the rope and the latch and Ace, still jumping at the gate, “what do we do?”

Bucky released his hold. “We’ll lock him in when we leave, I guess.”

Steve grinned. The pup pushed open the latch and burst through, just as excited as before to jab them with his cold nose and follow them down the kennel line. Bucky led him on, introducing dogs, trying to explain everything he knew about the dogs. Something about occiputs and stops, and pastern angle, withers, stifles, dewclaws. He was pretty sure all the words meant different things, but between Bucky jumping from dog to dog and Ace wiggling back and forth during each explanation Steve couldn’t be sure what anything meant.

At the end of the barn was another door, but this one closed up. Bucky hauled it open and Steve tried to help, but to him it didn’t seem like the door budged at all. It was sticky from fresh paint so Steve checked his hands, making sure he wasn’t tracking paint. As soon as there was enough gap in the door Ace leapt out, and Bucky squeezed through to follow him. Steve slipped through the gap without a problem.

The back of the barn opened to a vast field. The distant edge was marked by a stand of trees but the grass loomed larger. It swayed under gentle wind and Steve noticed with every swell that the field was pockmarked by flowers, thistles, and branches blown out of the woods. Ace dove right in, sometimes disappearing between clumps of grass and resurfacing—at least his head would—with eyes bright. Ace was darker than the grass but the wisps of fur on his tail were lighter, almost the same gold as the field. He didn’t stand out, though, more like a knot or a shadow than a wholly separate animal. Like he was meant to be there. 

Bucky waded a little into the field. “Here’s where we can practice. They’re retrievers, so they should bring things back.”

He rolled up his sleeves and stomped in after Bucky. It really was like wading into waves, the wind and the grass pushing him different ways and his shoes getting stuck under tangles or in muddy patches. “What things?”

“They’re bird dogs,” Bucky answered. “They should bring back birds.”

They stumbled along after Ace. The pup had yet to catch a single bird, but Steve was hopeful. Any dog this determined to get outside must have a real knack for hunting. And while they sloshed through grass Ace would periodically run back to them, popping his head out of the grass so he was easier to see and letting them each get in a few pats before he tore back out into the field. They adjusted course for a fallen log, which would pick them up out of the grass for a little. But they only saw it after Ace ran there first.

Steve knew a little about hunting dogs. Hounds tracked, by scent or sight, and pursued. Spaniels flushed, and retrieved, and were smaller. Setters and pointers trapped game with their eyes and rigid postures. Retrievers ran out and returned with birds—birds that had already been shot, Steve realized, but only after Ace unsuccessfully tore after a few songbirds. All of them were smart and trainable, but Bucky already told him over and over that goldens had an advantage. They were trainable, they were gentle, and they were pretty.

They watched Ace from the fallen log, dangling their feet overboard into the grass. From here Steve could see the fences on the edge of the property, the driveway they’d come from and a sharp right angle where the fence cut straight through the field. But the rest of the property, as far as he could see, was trees. Old, musty forests full of moss and broken branches, fallen leaves decaying on the ground. He’d only read about forests this old—he thought they were fairy tales, honestly, after he’d lived so long in the city. Ace ran up to the edge of the woods once and peered in, ears perked and shoulders taught, leaning almost imperceptibly forward. Bucky nudged him to tell him that’s how a dog should look, and that’s the pose the dogs had to have to win shows. Steve could see why; Ace didn’t look so much like a goofy puppy anymore. He looked poised, prepared to spring off at a moment’s notice. He waited, watched and listened, and could react to the smallest cue if he had to. Maybe there was something to these fancy dogs after all.

Eventually they called Ace back. Ace bounded up to them, following on their heels while they waded back to the barn. Steve was glad for it; Bucky walked faster than he could handle but Ace stuck close to him, and he could lean on the dog for balance without stopping. That didn’t stop Ace from darting off as soon as they were out of the field, and Ace jogged up and down the line of kennels when they returned to the big barn. Bucky dragged the door closed again but Steve watched outside. The door sealed off the grass sea slowly, like closing the pages of a particularly riveting book, and when it was shut the barn was dark. But it was substantial, too. The dogs whining eagerly and jangling their chain-link fences was more real now that he’d seen the dreamlike wilderness just outside.

2014

Steve sat on the dusty floor, in the light cast from the open barn door. From it he couldn’t see as much of Bucky, but he didn’t look as suspicious. If he wanted Bucky to come out into the light too Steve had to prove he had nothing to hide, and what better way to do that than by sitting in the spotlight?

But he could see that Bucky had rearranged the musty old blankets into more of a bed than a haphazard pile. And there were footprints all over the floor, kicking up dust and crossed back and forth so many times it was clear Bucky had explored the place. He must’ve been here at least a few days. 

“Did you go upstairs yet?” Steve asked softly. He wondered about the awards after all; they weren’t that important but they had been, once. There was a time when a blue ribbon meant more to him than anything else. 

Bucky stared at him. His face wasn’t pained, exactly. More like… haunted. And the shadows didn’t help any. 

“Do you remember the last time we were here?” Steve pressed. Silence wasn’t good enough but he didn’t wanna push too hard. 

Bucky kept staring. His eyes flickered, though, examining the corners of Steve’s face and the tension in his shoulders and the open doorway. One wrong move, it seemed, and Bucky would bolt. And Steve almost tried another question, unwilling to leave without some answer, when Bucky swallowed and said, “We kept the dogs here.”

“Yeah.” Steve nodded gratefully. “You said when you came back, we’d buy the whole property and take over.”

“Your Keeva followed you,” Bucky murmured, and the hints of a smile teased his face. “She broke out of the barn, chased you all the way to Brooklyn. You brought her over with us.”

“I did.” He felt tears prick at his eyes. Even when he had nothing he had Bucky and her, the most wonderful dog he ever raised. He couldn’t bear to think of her any place but back here.

“I thought,” Bucky said guiltily, “there might still be dogs here.”

Steve shook his head. “Not in a long time.”

  
This was the barn where they based their efforts. Only  _ their _ dogs lived in it, and their stud books, and their pencil-scratched registrations. This was the seat of their weekend getaways, ditching the city for the dogs. Learning together how to hunt and train and show. Looking at it now, Steve could still see the broken kennel door where Keeva had freed herself to chase after him. The plaque on the main house by the new parking lot said “Captain America Kennels,” but he knew it differently. He knew this barn, and Bucky, and Hudson River Retrievers.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you again for reading! Just some quick story notes:
> 
> "Keeva" is an Irish Gaelic name that means "precious," and she will for sure make appearances in future chapters!
> 
> The original Golden Retrievers were much lankier than the modern version of the breed. Nowadays they would be called "field" Golden Retrievers, and are traditionally darker or more red. In my mind, Ace is the epitome of the field Golden Retriever.
> 
> Upstate New York (where I imagine the kennel property is) is known for dairy farms! 
> 
> Hopefully I can get some more detailed chapters soon. Stay tuned!


End file.
